CHAPTER TWELVE
"Dancing in the Rain of Fire"
Tao found herself wondering if she had really lived while she was alive. The complexities of the Netherworld had become a strange and unexpected pacifier for her seething soul, filling the spaces that grief and anger had torn open.
Her growing affections for Hades felt like summer on the beach.
Tao was somewhat happy. If happiness was a butterfly, then Tao had found her garden of butterflies in Hel, and the specific irony of that was not lost on her.
She had died and found happiness. She had been murdered and found peace.
The world, she was learning, had its own ideas about timing.
She stood admiring her reflection in the acrylic glass wall of her quarters and noticed, not for the first time, that her eyes looked different down here.
Livelier. More present. The shiniest blue they had ever been, as though the Netherworld had stripped away whatever film the living world had laid over everything and left the actual colour underneath.
The Elysian fields had become their solace, away from the scrutinising eyes of the Netherworld's population. Tao found herself smiling involuntarily as she recalled the previous evening.
The skies had been burning scarlet, casting a soft ethereal glow across the pillars of Baal.
Anubis's skin had shone brightly in that light, like a blazing sapphire.
On earth it would have been a perfect way to end a date, lovers kissing in the rain.
But Tao and Anubis had slow waltzed in the flowing rain of fire, the embers drifting past them like petals, and she had felt nothing but the warmth of it and the weight of his hand at her waist.
"I have waited an eternity for you," he had whispered into her hair.
Her cheeks had turned crimson, a shade they hadn't since she was a teenager.
Tao-Lee Montgomery, who had navigated the most powerful social circles in the world without once losing her composure, had gone crimson at four words whispered in the Elysian fields.
She had noted this about herself and decided to let it be.
?
Sidius' insistent knocking broke her out of her reverie. The urgency in his voice was new and it put her immediately on alert. She pulled the door open and ushered in a Sidius who looked, for the first time since she had known him, genuinely strained.
"The uprising," he said without preamble, leaning against the wall. "It is escalating beyond the usual noise. There are organised gatherings near Tartarus now. Souls moving in coordinated patterns. Someone is directing it."
The whispers of revolt had been background noise since Tao's arrival, but it was now in the forefront.
"What about Hades?" Tao asked immediately, guilt flickering through her at how much of his attention she had been taking from the governance of his realm.
"Anubis is managing," Sidius said. "But the realm needs its equilibrium restored."
"What can I do?" Tao asked.
"Nothing, ideally. I came to warn you so you wouldn't be caught in the crossfire. Stay away from the lower corridors and the areas near Tartarus." He paused looking at her, knowing this advice would not be fully followed. "Though I acknowledge that telling you to do nothing is somewhat optimistic."
"I may have a plan," Tao said.
"Of course you do."
She smiled and walked past him into the corridor.
The hallway was different today. Thicker with movement, charged with something that had no precise human equivalent. The situation had passed the point of quiet discontent and was moving toward something active.
"There she is," a voice said as she passed. "The slut."
Tao's step faltered just slightly. She straightened immediately and kept walking, shoulders level, gaze forward. She was not going to let them see anything they could use.
She found Erebus in a corner of the lower hall, a vast and ancient figure, as still as ever. He was the ears of the kingdom, and the ears of the kingdom were exactly who she needed right now.
"Erebus?" Tao said, keeping her voice easy and her posture open.
"Who's asking?" His voice was gruff.
"Tao," she said pleasantly. "I was hoping you could tell me something about the uprising. About what the souls actually want. Not the official version."
Erebus had been around long enough to have seen every kind of person and every kind of play. He looked at Tao for a long moment.
"Souls only dance to the beats of fate," he said.
"What can one do to help restore the balance?" Tao asked.
"Your actions threaten the fabric of this realm," Erebus replied. "You feel it yourself. Find your path. Fix your destiny. That is the answer to everything you are asking."
Tao sat with that for a moment. She had heard those words from multiple sources now, each time in a slightly different shape, but they all pointed to the same thing: her unresolved fate was not just her personal problem.
It was affecting the entire equilibrium of the Netherworld, and that meant the uprising and her situation were connected in ways she hadn't fully grasped yet.
She went to Hades.
He was already watching the door when she entered. He smiled when she walked in.
"You look worried," he said.
"I am worried," she said simply, sitting beside him rather than across from him.
"The uprising is more organised than I had initially thought.
Erebus told me my actions threaten the fabric of this realm.
I think the uprising and my unresolved fate are connected and I think I know what needs to happen. "
He was quiet, watching her.
"But first I need to know something," she said. "I need to know about Lilith. Because Sidius wouldn't tell me and it was the first time he's refused me anything, which means it's yours to tell."
She had learned the name Lilith from one of the wondering souls that would often speak to her unprompted.
A silence stretched between them. In the Elysian fields the rain of fire had felt like the most natural thing in the world. Here in the throne room, with the weight of what he was about to say sitting between them, the air felt different.
"Your ancestors made a covenant," he said.
"A life bound to this realm in exchange for the Montgomery legacy.
That much you know." He looked at her steadily.
"What you don't know is that the covenant was more specific than that.
The bound soul was promised as my bride.
My Lilith. The queen of the Netherworld.
That is why your fate has been undecided.
That is why the realm is unsettled. And that is why the souls are pushing toward Tartarus. "
Tao sat very still.
"When," she said, her voice controlled, though she was anything but, "were you going to tell me that?"
"Tao—"
"I mean, how convenient," she said. The control in her voice was starting to cost her. "A girl falls into your realm, already predisposed to find you compelling, and you let her develop feelings while knowing she was always going to end up here regardless. I practically handed myself to you."
"That is not—"
"I need some air," she said, standing. "Or whatever passes for air down here."
She walked out. She did not slam the door. She was too angry to bother with the performance of anger. She walked until the corridor opened into one of the quieter gardens and stood in the unfamiliar darkness of it and breathed, trying to decide what she actually believed.